Continuing our article:
In the end, James finds an extremely long staircase leading him to a new place not on his map. This eventually leads him to a room containing a very deep hole. With no other way forward, James jumps into the hole, only to find himself in what appears to be a seemingly dead-end area. However, hitting a wall at a certain point reveals a door. James crosses the door only to face another hole, which he jumps into, of course.
This time, he finds himself in the local prison cafeteria, where he encounters Eddie sitting by the door, holding a gun, appearing somewhat shocked.
Eddie comes to a startling realization: “Killing someone is not a big deal. Just put the gun to his head… Boom!”
James notices the slanting body on a nearby table, and asks Eddie if he killed the man, to which Eddie responds that he was “mocking him with his eyes.” This is, of course, a very chilling behavior.
James tells Eddie that killing someone just because they looked at him the wrong way is not right. Eddie doesn’t take this well and asks him why not, explaining that he was always calm when people mistreated him, adding that “that stupid dog” deserved it too. Eddie notices that he is unsettling James, so he tries to backtrack by saying he was just joking before he leaves.
As in previous levels, James navigates the prison to solve multiple puzzles until he reaches what appears to be a heavily contaminated morgue. And of course, it contains another hole. James jumps in, finds an elevator that transports him to an area called Labyrinth. There, he comes across a cell containing Maria who miraculously is still alive.
James is surprised, and asks her if she suffered a serious injury. Maria responds in the negative and seems very confused. He reminds her that she was stabbed by Pyramid Head, prompting her to inquire about what he’s talking about. Here we note a clear change in Maria’s behavior: she stops flirting and mentions a video tape that James and Mary recorded at the hotel. In fact, she speaks to him as if she were Mary.
James asks if he is still talking to Maria. Then Maria wakes up from the state and says: “I’m not your Mary.” He asks her again if she is Maria, and she answers him: “I am, if you want me to be.”
James just wants a clear answer from her. Maria stands up and says: “It doesn’t matter who I am, James. I am here for you.” She touches his face and says: “See? I am real.”
After that, Maria offers James sexual services if he can find a way to reach her. With a new goal in mind, he sets out to achieve it.
In his continued exploration, he finds a blood-covered newspaper clipping. The clipping is difficult to read, but it discusses a murder case where the victim, a man, was stabbed multiple times. He then moves through a corridor covered in newspapers, where he hears Angela screaming from a nearby room: “No, Daddy, please no!”
James enters the room to find Angela in a semi-hallucinatory state, sitting near a TV table, threatened by a monster.
James defeats the monster, then approaches Angela to check on her. But she waves him off, then stands up and kicks the monster several times before lifting the TV and throwing it on top of him.
He asks her to calm down, but she angrily tells him not to try to control her. James explains that was not his intention, to which Angela responds by saying, “So, what do you want? I get it. You’re trying to be nice to me, aren’t you? I know what you’re after. It’s always the same. You seek only one thing.”
James realizes what Angela means, and tells her that his motives are not what she thinks, but she does not believe him. She informs him that he can force her to do it anyway, and adds that he can “hit me as he always did.” At this last sentence, Angela collapses on the floor crying and vomiting, telling James that he only cares about himself, describing him as a “disgusting pig.”
James tries to console her, but she refuses his touch and tells him that he makes her sick. She stands up, then changes the subject, saying that James told her that Mary is dead. James confirms this, adding that she died because of her illness. Angela responds angrily: “Liar! I know about you. You don’t want her by your side anymore. Maybe you found someone else.”
Angela leaves, and James scoffs at her accusations.
Through this exchange, it becomes very clear the deep psychological wound Angela is suffering from.
In any case, James continues his journey, and eventually finds a door leading to Maria’s cell. Unfortunately, when he gets there, he finds her dead on the bed.
James mourns over Maria’s body for a while, uttering Mary’s name sorrowfully.
In the end, he leaves the room and arrives at a room containing a graveyard. What catches his attention is the presence of three new graves, each bearing a tombstone with a familiar name: Eddie Dombrowski, Angela Orosco, and James Sunderland.
Of course, James sees another hole, so he jumps into the grave bearing his name. This leads him to a corridor, which in turn leads him to a huge frozen room.
Here, James meets Eddie again, but this time with another nearby body. James inquires Eddie about what’s happening, to which Eddie responds angrily:
“What does it look like to you?! He was always tormenting me. ‘You’re fat, disgusting piece of garbage! You make me sick!’ ‘Oh fatty, you’re nothing but a waste of skin!’ ‘You’re so ugly even your mother doesn’t want you!’ Well, maybe I’m just a fat disgusting piece of garbage. But do you know what? It doesn’t matter if you’re smart, dumb, ugly, or pretty. Everything becomes equal once you die! And the corpse can’t laugh. From now on, if someone mocks me, I’ll kill him. That simple.”
Eddie moves on to the next room, and James asks him if he has lost his mind. Eddie takes this question very poorly and threatens to kill James. And thus the boss battle begins.
After a brief exchange of gunfire, Eddie escapes to the adjacent room with James following him. This room is filled with strangely shaped bodies hanging on meat hooks. As James searches for Eddie, the latter asks James if he knows what a life of mockery and contempt does. Eddie confesses to two things: shooting a dog and shooting the knee of one of the people who used to torment him, causing his disability.
James asks Eddie if he thinks killing people is acceptable. Eddie replies: “Don’t act like you’re a holy person, James. This town called to you too. You and I are not like the others. Don’t you understand that?”
Then Eddie reappears, and the battle resumes, ending with James killing Eddie in self-defense.
James kneels beside Eddie’s body for a moment, seeming to have a slight emotional breakdown from what just happened. Then he once again questions whether Mary had actually died three years ago.
Subsequently, James leaves the place to find himself on the promenade behind the Historical Society. He jumps into a nearby rowboat and begins rowing towards a lighthouse on the horizon, eventually reaching his destination: The Lakeview Hotel. Upon entry, he finds a map of the hotel with the room they stayed in, him and Mary, room number 312, marked with the words: “Waiting for you…”
Of course, reaching that room requires some effort, as it involves solving a puzzle related to placing small music boxes into a larger one to obtain a key.
His first destination is the hotel cafe. Upon entering, the piano makes a loud noise, which startles James, but he calms down when he realizes that Laura is the one playing the piano.
James chats with Laura for a while, and she asks if he found Mary. He answers that he hasn’t. She then tells James that she’s sure Mary is here because she received a message from her.
James asks her about the message she mentioned, so she hands it to him to read:
“Dear Laura,
Leave this message with Rachel to give to you after I’m gone. I’m in a faraway, peaceful, beautiful place now. Please forgive me for not saying goodbye before I left.
Take care, Laura.
And don’t be too hard on the Sisters. And as for James, I know you hate him because you think he was mean to me, but please give him a chance. It’s true that he can be angry at times and doesn’t laugh much. But deep down, he’s a very kind person.
I love you Laura as if you were my own daughter. If things had been different, I would have hoped to adopt you.
Happy birthday, Laura.
Your friend forever, Mary”
After James finishes reading the letter, Laura asks him about her age. He learns that she turned eight last week. James realizes that if this is true, then Mary couldn’t have died three years ago.
Laura tells him that Mary talked a lot about their trip together, and that she really wanted to visit the town again. She then adds that there is another message, but she quickly realizes that she dropped it somewhere before running off to search for it.
James continues to explore the hotel, and eventually finds several items, including the key to room 312 and the tape Maria mentioned earlier. After obtaining these items, James heads to room 312, which contains a TV connected to a VCR.
The video starts innocently: Mary appears and speaks enthusiastically about how much she loves the town and how people say the land she’s standing on is sacred. She asks James to take her there again before she starts coughing unnervingly. The tape then transitions to a scene showing James arriving at Mary in the hospital bed. He kisses her cheek.
Then he takes her pillow and places it over her face.
As the TV screen returns to static, Laura enters and asks James if he found Mary. Slowly, James tells her that Mary is dead, and confesses that he killed her. Laura screams at him, demanding him to bring Mary back, and starts hitting him with all her might as a young child.
James apologizes, but Mary is already gone. Laura runs away, and James sits devastated in the chair.
The radio begins to emit a sound, but this time it’s Mary’s voice clearly heard. She asks him where he is and if he hates her. Driven by a new incentive, James leaves the room to find that the hotel is in a much worse state than when he first entered. Everything around him has been severely damaged by water, and some parts of the hotel are on fire.
In the hotel’s reading room, James can listen to a recording of a conversation between him and a doctor about Mary’s health condition. Here we discover that Mary was diagnosed three years ago, but she passed away much later.
In the end, James comes across a burning staircase, where he has one final encounter with Angela.
At first, Angela seems to see James as her mother, and she says: “Now there’s no one left but you. Maybe… maybe then I could rest.” But she realizes that she’s talking to James after he steps back.
She apologizes, which seems to be a natural reaction for her. Then she thanks him for saving her from the monster earlier, but adds that she wishes he hadn’t: “Even mama said it. I got what I deserved.”
Credibly, James tells her that she doesn’t deserve that, but Angela replies that she doesn’t deserve his pity. She then turns to sarcasm: “Or maybe you think you can save me. Will you love me? Will you care for me? Will you heal all my pain?”
James finds no response to that, so Angela says: “That’s what I expected.” Then she asks him to return her knife. James refuses, and Angela responds, asking why he’s keeping it for himself, saying she won’t allow him to leave unless he lets her go. James objects to that, saying he will never kill himself.
Angela turns and ascends the burning stairs. Trying to break the silence, James comments on the heat. Angela retorts: “Do you see that too? For me, it’s always like this.” Then she continues up the stairs.
After this meeting, James eventually reaches the hotel’s foyer, where he does not find one, but two Pyramid Heads standing next to Maria, who is upside down in a frame-like structure.
Tension escalates with some shouting from both James and Maria, then one of the monsters stabs a spear into Maria. James falls to his knees, and the monsters tell him that while they needed to punish him earlier, now that they know the truth, there’s no need for them anymore.
After a brief skirmish, Pyramid Heads move to the center of the room, where they impale themselves with their spears. Each one of them holds a stone shaped like an egg, one red and the other rust-colored. These stones are necessary to open the doors leading to a long corridor.
While walking through the corridor, he can hear a conversation between Mary and James:
At the end of the corridor, James finds a ladder leading to the roof, where the game’s endings branch out.
There are three regular endings:
Maria Ending: This ending is obtained by spending as much time as possible with Maria, protecting her from harm, and not losing the letter and photo in James’s inventory. In this ending, James finds Mary sitting on a bed on the roof. He apologizes for being late, and Mary asks him if he really wanted to see her. James replies that he did, and Mary responds that it’s not true because he killed her.
James tells her that he couldn’t bear to see her suffering anymore, and Mary reminds him that she was a burden to the point where James ended up hating her. James admits that Mary is not entirely wrong and that he was exhausted. Mary tells him that she can’t forgive him, then she transforms into a monster.
“Maria” Ending: After the battle that follows Mary’s transformation into a monster, the scene shifts to James in the garden, where he first met Maria. Maria approaches him and asks him if he killed Mary again. James admits to it, then tells her that he wants her to stay with him.
The two leave together, and eventually arrive at the rest stop station that appeared at the beginning of the game. Maria begins coughing, prompting James to say that they must do something about it, and the game ends on this scene.
“In Water” Ending: This ending is obtained by reading the diaries on the hospital roof, listening to the recording at the hotel, and hearing the full conversation in the corridor before reaching the final boss. Factors influencing this ending include receiving large amounts of damage, waiting for the longest possible time before healing, and examining Angela’s knife.
Upon reaching the hotel roof, James finds Mary standing by the window. He calls out to her, but quickly realizes that he is actually talking to Maria disguised as Mary. Maria tells him that he’s mistaken again, and reminds him that he killed Mary.
James insists that she’s not Mary, and Mary is all he truly wanted. Maria tells him that she won’t let him leave, before turning into a monster and attacking him.
After the battle, James finds himself sitting by Mary’s bed in her room. He asks her to forgive him, and she reminds him that she told him earlier that she wanted to die. James starts by saying that’s the reason he killed her, but he remembers that
